Sitecore AIDA Framework for marketers – Some features to optimize your experience

Sitecore AIDA (Analysis, Insights, Decision, and Automation) Framework is marketing optimization technology framework which helps marketers in optimizing their user experience. So, what is AIDA? AIDA is not a product, but a platform that enables optimization that provides a complete ecosystem to marketers.

Let us discuss different components of AIDA framework in detail.

1. Analysis – Sitecore provides a different capability for analyzing interactions of visitors with websites at various touch points.

A/B and multivariate testing – This tool optimizes your content based on variations of visitors and finding which piece resonates better with them.

Goal tracking – This feature of AIDA framework helps in identifying how different and specific goals are achieved. For example, it will tell how the goal of downloading a brochure is achieved basis multiple contacts and their behavior. This goal achievement will further trigger other goal activities.

How does it help? You can setup/configure multiple goals for different scenarios. For instance, I can create a goal if a visitor reviews a particular set of pages in one go. And, if I achieve this goal, I can trigger action for this.

Experience analytics - Sitecore has developed business intelligence (BI) tools specifically for marketing analysts who want to extract micro level details for different touchpoint interactions and provide insights into marketing performance.

Path analysis– Sitecore provides a tool called path analyzer which helps in identifying the paths that have maximum traffic or highest engagement value per visit or efficiency or vice versa. This provides different paths used by different contacts to reach a particular page.

How does it help? It tells you if you have an efficient way to reach out to the specifically desired page. For example, we may have launched some new services that help in identifying whether the user is provided with a seamless customer journey to reach a particular service page and if there are holes in the customer journey, they need to be filled in.

2. Insights – Once you have all the analytics in place, you can extract insights into customer’s interests that in turn assists in providing a better experience.

Rules-based targeting– Sitecore has a robust rule-based engine which can help in personalizing content for different scenarios. For example, you can personalize content for specific Geo Location, keyword, referral, etc.

Behavioral targeting – This is a very cool tool to provide rich content based on customer’s interest depending on the pattern followed by visitors. That means you can define different behavior pattern cards that can be used for the engagement plan. With this, you can personalize content depending on the pattern observed for different visitors and identify their topic of concerns/interests.

Marketing reports – Marketers are always interested in reports that help in spotting latest trends. For example, they can find how different channels/campaigns are performing. Sitecore’s unique Engagement Value™ metric provides apple to apple comparison to compare campaign and channels.

Customer Segmentation – Sitecore helps in creating segmentations for your customers instead of using static lists with smaller groups in order to provide better contextual information. You can generate rules to create dynamic segments based on criteria such as demographic or cross-channel interaction, customer's profile, behavior, location. Consider real-time examples, such as creating specific segmentation based on interest in a particular product line. Visitors can be provided with product related contextual information that helps them in decision making.

Content Testing and Optimization – Sitecore performs various tests such as page tests, A/B tests, testing of complete page content or section of a page.

4. Automation – Sitecore platform has nice marketing automation to take care of needs of responding to certain activities/actions of visitors.

Lead Nurturing/Profile Scoring – Profile scoring helps in putting down amalgamation of old traditional scoring parameters like the page visited, downloads with more sophisticated engagement values to increase scores for each profile. This simply helps in lead nurturing.

Marketing Automation – Marketing automation is critical for marketers today. You can use profile scores with Sitecore marketing automation and your CRM system to pass qualified leads to sales.

Following are a few reasons why marketers cannot do away with marketing automation:

The customer journey isn’t linear - There is no one way to the buying lifecycle. Journeys are crossing, and there are different touchpoints to reach to a decision.

Customers switch channels seamlessly and so should you - It is crucial to provide a seamless experience across channels. So, if a visitor moves from the desktop to mobile, he/she should have a consistent experience and not be tied up in another cycle to provide right contextual information.

Nothing engages better than personalization - This is true! Recall your last visit to an e-retailer and getting information on products that you have researched in the past. You haven't bought it yet because your research is still on.

Consuming complete Sitecore AIDA ecosystem will fetch you a higher level of engagement, and better lead nurturing while optimizing conversion.

Please note that different parts of AIDA need to be in sync to achieve compelling results.